Hosseini Khaled Quotes & Sayings

The world didn't see the inside of you, that it didn't care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. — Khaled Hosseini

In the coming days and weeks, Laila would scramble frantically to commit it all to memory, what happened next. Like an art lover running out of a burning museum, she would grab whatever she could
a look, a whisper, a moan
to salvage from perishing to preserve. But time is the most unforgiving of fires, and she couldn't, in the end, save it all. — Khaled Hosseini

I find myself drawn to that period where children are about to leave childhood behind. When you're 12 years old, you still have one foot in childhood; the other is poised to enter a completely new stage of life. Your innocent understanding of the world moves towards something messier and more complicated, and once it does you can never go back. — Khaled Hosseini

And here she was now, over those boulders and parched hills, with a home of her own, a husband of her own, heading toward on final, cherished province: Motherhood. How delectable it was to think of this baby, her baby, their baby. How glorious it was to know that her love for it already dwarfed anything she had ever felt as a human being, to know that there was no need any longer for pebble games. — Khaled Hosseini

But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie. — Khaled Hosseini

The thing about people who mean everything they say is that they think everyone else does too. — Khaled Hosseini

True redemption is...when guilt leads to good. — Khaled Hosseini

The rope that pulls you from the flood can become a noose around your neck. — Khaled Hosseini

These random unkind moment that catch you wen you least expect them. — Khaled Hosseini

There was so much goodness in my life. So much happiness. I wondered whether I deserved any of it. — Khaled Hosseini

Laila remembered Mammy telling Babi once that she had married a man who had no convictions. Mammy didn't understand. She didn't understand that if she looked into a mirror, she would find the one unfailing conviction of his life looking right back at her. — Khaled Hosseini

I see America has infused you with the optimism that has made her so great — Khaled Hosseini

It is a heartBreaking sound, Amir Jan, the Wailing of a mother. I pray to Allah you Never hear it. — Khaled Hosseini

Thats the thing about people who mean every thing they say. They think everybody else does too. — Khaled Hosseini

If there was a God, he'd guide the winds, let them blow for me so that, with a tug of my string, I'd cut loose my pain, my longing. — Khaled Hosseini

She wished she could visit Mariam's grave, to sit with her awhile, leave a flower or two. But she sees now that it doesn't matter. Mariam is never very far ... Mariam is in her own heart, where she shines with the bursting radiance of a thousand suns. — Khaled Hosseini

I have this almost pathological fear of boring the reader. — Khaled Hosseini

I would give them (aspiring writers) the oldest advice in the craft: Read and write. Read a lot. Read new authors and established ones, read people whose work is in the same vein as yours and those whose genre is totally different. You've heard of chain-smokers. Writers, especially beginners, need to be chain-readers. And lastly, write every day. Write about things that get under your skin and keep you up at night. — Khaled Hosseini

He lived in a mansion, but in a shrunken world. — Khaled Hosseini

Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting. — Khaled Hosseini

James Parkinson. George Huntington. Robert Graves. John Down. Now this Lou Gehrig fellow of mine. How did men come to monopolize disease names too? — Khaled Hosseini

It was you Nabi. It was always you. Didn't you know? — Khaled Hosseini

So much had happened since those childhood days, so much that needed to be said. But that first night the enormity of it all stole the words from her. That night, it was blessing enough to be beside him. It was blessing enough to know that he was here, to feel the warmth of him next to her, to lie with him, their heads touching, his right hand laced in her left. — Khaled Hosseini

I think that to fully appreciate baseball, it helps to have been born in the U.S. — Khaled Hosseini

Attention shifted to him like sunflowers turning to the sun. — Khaled Hosseini

If America taught me anything, it's that quitting is right up there with pissing in the Girl Scouts' lemonade jar. — Khaled Hosseini

Afghanistan is a rural nation, where 85 percent of people live in the countryside. And out there it's very, very conservative, very tribal - almost medieval. — Khaled Hosseini

Was a man who wrote his own press kit, and his generosity was a calculated piece of an intracately constructed character — Khaled Hosseini

I missed you."
There was a pause. Then Tariq turned to her with a half-grinning, half-grimacing look of distaste. "What's the matter with you?"
How many times had she, Hasina, and Giti said those same three words to each other, Laila wondered, said it without hesitation, after only two or three days of not seeing each other? I missed you, Hasina. Oh, I missed you too. In Tariq's grimace, Laila learned that boys differed from girls in this regard. They didn't make a show of friendship. They felt no urge, no need, for this sort of talk. Laila imagined it had been this way for her brothers too. Boys, Laila came to see, treated friendship the way they treated the sun: its existence undisputed; its radiance best enjoyed, not beheld directly.
"I was trying to annoy you," she said.
He gave her a sidelong glance. "It worked."
But she thought his grimace softened. And she thought that maybe the sunburn on his cheeks deepened momentarily. — Khaled Hosseini

They say, Find a purpose in your life and live it. But, sometimes, it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one you never had in mind. — Khaled Hosseini

A Western-style democracy in Afghanistan is a dream. I don't see that as a reality anytime soon. But I think some form of representative political process is not that far-fetched. — Khaled Hosseini

It always hurts more to have and loose than not to have in first place — Khaled Hosseini

Give sustenance, Allah.
Give sustenance to me. — Khaled Hosseini

I didn't know what the other guy was playing for, maybe just bragging rights. But this was my one chance to become someone who was looked at, not seen, listened to, not heard. — Khaled Hosseini

That night, Zalmai wakes up coughing. Before Laila can move, Tariq swings his legs over the side of the bed. He straps on his prosthesis and walks over to Zalmai, lifts him up into his arms. From the bed, Laila watches Tariq's shape moving back and forth in the darkness. She sees the outline of Zalmai's head on his shoulder, the knot of his hands at Tariq's neck, his small feet bouncing by Tariq's hip.
When Tariq comes back to bed, neither of them says anything. Laila reaches over and touches his face. Tariq's cheeks are wet. — Khaled Hosseini

After everything he'd built, planned, fought for, fretted over, dreamed of, this was the summation of his life; one disappointing son and two suitcases. — Khaled Hosseini

Years later, I learned an English word for the creature that Assef was, a word for which a good Farsi equivalent does not exist: sociopath. — Khaled Hosseini

That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms. — Khaled Hosseini

It always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place. — Khaled Hosseini

Thought, She's your wife. My mother, we buried. But he knew to stifle those words before they came — Khaled Hosseini

The finger cut, to save the hand. — Khaled Hosseini

It was the way Nana uttered the word - not so much saying it as spitting it at her - that made Mariam feel the full sting of it. — Khaled Hosseini

Hassan and I were stunned. Dazed. John Wayne didn't really speak Farsi — Khaled Hosseini

Sometimes the shifting of rocks is deep, deep below, and it's powerful and scary down there, but that all we feel on the surface is a slight tremor. Only a slight tremor. — Khaled Hosseini

Everywhere she looked, she saw bright colors: on the drab, gray concrete apartments, on the tin-roofed, open-fronted stores, in the muddy water flowing in the gutters. It was as though a rainbow had melted into her eyes. Rasheed — Khaled Hosseini

Without women taking an active role in Afghan society, rebuilding Afghanistan is going to be very difficult. — Khaled Hosseini

We saw our first Western together, Rio Bravo with John Wayne, at the Cinema Park, across the street from my favorite bookstore. — Khaled Hosseini

Come. There is a way to be good again... — Khaled Hosseini

That there was in her life the absence of something, or someone, fundamental to her own existence. Sometimes it was vague, like a message sent across shadowy byways and vast distances, a weak signal on a radio dial, remote, warbled. Other times it felt so clear, this absence, so intimately close it made her heart lurch. — Khaled Hosseini

My books are love stories at core, really. But I am interested in manifestations of love beyond the traditional romantic notion. In fact, I seem not particularly inclined to write romantic love as a narrative motive or as an easy source of happiness for my characters. — Khaled Hosseini

She had this laugh. I swear it's why I married her, Laila, for that laugh! It bulldozed you. You stood no chance against it. — Khaled Hosseini

Then. You want a story and I will tell you one. But just the one. Don't either of you ask me for more. — Khaled Hosseini

It's wrong to hurt even bad people. Because they don't know any better, and because bad people sometimes become good. — Khaled Hosseini

In my experience, men who understand women seem to rarely want to have anything to do with them. — Khaled Hosseini

Nothing wrong with cowardice as long as it comes with prudence. — Khaled Hosseini

If I ever do get married," Tariq said, "they'll have to make room for three on the wedding stage. Me, the bride, and the guy holding the gun to my head — Khaled Hosseini

You don't order someone to polish your shoes one day and call them 'sister' the next. — Khaled Hosseini

She was the trembler of knees, the spiller of teacups. — Khaled Hosseini

I laughed. Clutched him in a hug and planted a kiss on his cheek. "What was that for?" he said; startled, blushing. I gave him a friendly hug, smiled. "You're a prince, Hassan. You're a prince and I love you. — Khaled Hosseini

Perspective [is] a luxury when your head [is] constantly buzzing with a swarm of demons. — Khaled Hosseini

Lili lili birdbath
sitting on a dirtpath
minnow sat on the rim and drank
slipped and in the water she sank — Khaled Hosseini

I pray. I pray that my sins have not caught up with me the way I'd always feared they would. — Khaled Hosseini

Her beauty was the talk of the valley.It skipped two generations of women in our family, but it sure didn't bypass you, Laila. — Khaled Hosseini

Mammy was soon asleep, leaving Laila with dueling emotions: reassured that Mammy meant to live on, stung that she was not the reason. She would never leave her mark on Mammy's heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed. — Khaled Hosseini

But the flip side of being spared was the agony of wondering who hadn't. — Khaled Hosseini

They rarely look at Baba
the teenagers
and then only with cold indifference, or even subtle disdain, as if my father should have known better than to allow old age and decay to happen to him. — Khaled Hosseini

People find meaning and redemption in the most unusual human connections. — Khaled Hosseini

All my life, I [Pari] have lived like an aquarium fish in the safety of a glass tank, behind a barrier as impenetrable as it has been transparent. I have been free to observe the glimmering world on the other side, to picture myself in it, if I like. But I have always been contained, hemmed in, by the hard, unyielding confines of the existence that Baba has constructed for me, at first knowingly, when I was young, and now guilelessly, now that he is fading day by day. I think I have grown accustomed to the glass and am terrified that when it breaks, when I am alone, I will spill out into the wide open unknown and flop around, helpless, lost, gasping for breath. — Khaled Hosseini

There's nothing easy about writing. It's always difficult. It's always a struggle. — Khaled Hosseini

Could unsheathe from her arsenal a mockingly grave way of talking about things she found either portentous or frivolous. She could shrink your aspirations before your very eyes. — Khaled Hosseini

It blistered the eyes , beauty like hers . — Khaled Hosseini

Laila lay there and listened, wishing Mammy would notice that she, Laila, hadn't become shaheed, that she was alive, here, in bed with her, that she had hopes and a future. But Laila knew that her future was no match for her brothers' past. They had overshadowed her in life. They would obliterate her in death. Mammy was now the curator of their lives' museum and she, Laila, a mere visitor. A receptacle for their myths. The parchment on which Mammy meant to ink their legends. — Khaled Hosseini

I shook my head no. For minutes, neither of us spoke a word. It breathed between us, what he had said, the pain of a life suppressed, of happiness never to be. — Khaled Hosseini

If culture was a house, then language was the key to the front door, [and] to all rooms inside. — Khaled Hosseini

Afghan women, as a group, I think their suffering has been equaled by very few other groups in recent world history. — Khaled Hosseini

Exploitation to finance a beach house in Hawaii was one thing. Doing it to feed your kids was another. — Khaled Hosseini

A part of me was hoping someone would wake up and hear, so I wouldn't have to live with this lie anymore. But no one woke up and in the silence that followed, I understood the nature of my new curse: I was going to get away with it. — Khaled Hosseini

Don't be afraid to tell the truth. It's better to hurt someone by truth than to make them happy by lies. — Khaled Hosseini

In the middle of the night, when Laila woke up thirsty, she found their hands still clamped together, in the white-knuckle, anxious way of children clutching balloon strings. — Khaled Hosseini

The ordinary, utterly mundane reason behind the massacre makes it somehow more terrible, and far more depressing. The word 'senseless' springs to mind, and Idris thwarts it. It's what people always say. A senseless act of violence. A senseless murder. As if you could commit sensible murder. — Khaled Hosseini

I've been told, and I think I recognize it, that there's a cinematic quality to my writing, with a sense of image and place and scene - and, some would say, my tendency to finish my books the way Hollywood finishes its films. — Khaled Hosseini

Hills that stand soft and a sky that stands high and blue, and the sun setting behind a windmill, and always, always, hazy strings of mountains that fall and fall away on the horizon. — Khaled Hosseini

To this day, I find it hard to gaze directly at people like Hassan, people who mean every word they say. — Khaled Hosseini

What was it about a season's first snowfall, Mariam wondered, that was so entrancing? Was it the chance to see something as yet unsoiled, untrodden? To catch the fleeting grace of a new season, a lovely beginning, before it was trampled and corrupted? — Khaled Hosseini

I remembered how, as a boy, I would stew over all the things Mama wouldn't do, things other mothers did. Hold my hand when we walked. Sit me up on her lap, read bedtime stories, kiss my face good night. Those things were true enough. But, all those years, I'd been blind to a greater truth, which lay unacknowledged and unappreciated, buried deep beneath my grievances. It was this: that my mother would never leave me. — Khaled Hosseini

Happiness like this is frightening ... they only let you be this happy if they're preparing to take something away from you — Khaled Hosseini

And I wrote you.
Volumes.
Volumes. — Khaled Hosseini

Shoes: that putting them on a bed invited death into the family, that a quarrel would follow if one put on the left shoe first. — Khaled Hosseini

- She studies mathematics at the Sorbonne.
...
- Perhaps it's her way of rebelling. You know a thing or two about rebellion, I think.
- Yes, but I did it in the proper way. I drank and smoked and took lovers. Who rebells with mathematics? — Khaled Hosseini

There is only one sin. and that is theft ... when you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth. — Khaled Hosseini

Perhaps this is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing can be undone. — Khaled Hosseini

She said, 'I'm so afraid.' And I said, 'why?,' and she said, 'Because I'm so profoundly happy, Dr. Rasul. Happiness like this is frightening.' I asked her why and she said, 'They only let you be this happy if they're preparing to take something from you. — Khaled Hosseini

Other Afghans from American, or from Europe," Amra says, "they come and take picture of her. They take video. They make promises. Then they go home and show their families. LIke she is zoo animal. I allow it because I think maybe they will help. But they forget. I never hear from them. — Khaled Hosseini

Then Kabul's dogs, who had developed a taste for human meat, would feast. All — Khaled Hosseini

You've always been a tourist here. You just didn't know it. — Khaled Hosseini

She thought of Aziza's stutter, and of what Aziza had said earlier about fractures and powerful collisions deep down and how sometimes all we see on the surface is a slight tremor. — Khaled Hosseini

It feels as though there is a gaping hole in the middle of everything. The decades of my mother's life here with Thalia, they are dark, vast spaces to me. I have been absent. Absent for all the meals Thalia and Mama have shared at this table, the laughs, the quarrels, the stretches of boredom, the illnesses, the long string of simple rituals that make up a lifetime. Entering my child-hood home is a little disorienting, like reading the end of a novel that I'd started, then abandoned, long ago. — Khaled Hosseini

Thinking of the anguish of his final days and my own helplessness in the face of it, makes everything I have done, everything I want to do, seem as unsubstantial as the little vows you make yourself as you're going to sleep, the ones you've already forgotten by the time you wake up. — Khaled Hosseini

Usually in films, when Muslims pray, it's either before or after they've blown something up. — Khaled Hosseini

Then I think of all the tricks, all the minutes all the hours and days and weeks and months and years waiting for me. All of it without them. And I can't breathe then, like someone's stepping on my heart, Laila. So weak I just want to collapse somewhere. — Khaled Hosseini